Splinters
by TheYellowKirby
Summary: Memories of the past conjure up a whole slew of trouble for Eriol and Tomoyo. Who are the figures within the dreams and what do they have to do with the present? ET with the usual SS splashed through out. Chapter 2 up as of DEC 28, 2007!
1. Splinters I

Splinters

A joint fan fiction by: Candyland and Ciuline Ihmenjo

Card Captor Sakura does not belong to me. The characters in Card Captor Sakura do not belong to me. CLAMP owns CCS. Besides, even if you do try and sue me, I have no money.

_Pre-fiction…_

After negotiating with Candyland, I took back Splinters as a solo-work as, she is currently writing for the Conan fandom. I haven't found anything I like more than CCS, so I'm going to write this instead of making it a joint project. Yes, this is a short chapter, but at the same time, wasn't my first chapter of Fallen quite short as well?

Hope you guys still like this.

_Italicized words_ are thoughts. **Bold words** are emphasis. CAPS WORDS are shouting.

**o()o Splinters I: Eriol o()o**

_These were my memories, yet at the exact same time, they did not belong to me. _

_They were the memories of the one who existed before me, that much I knew. But I had never heard of this memory, or even had visions of it in the past. Instead, I was utterly in the dark in a reality that was once my own._

_The doorway to a dark, bleak room._

_A rumpled form lying on the bed, coughing without sound. _

_Lips moving in tune with silent words._

_There was no sound in these worlds, there never was, could not be. Memories, though preserving sound in most manners, rarely cared to play back the voices that were trapped within time. At least, in visions of the past and future, especially in dreams, sounds often did not manage to translate into actual noise. They emerged at little more than gibberish, static in the background, to emerge as faint buzzing or tinny echoes, indistinguishable even in the silence that was a dream._

_The lips of the person moved, shadows playing across the form just enough to guise it completely, as if the wielder of such a memory did not want that form to ever be unveiled. Even the body was shrouded in mystery, shadows and clouds of dust that were most certainly conjured up to protect the identity of the pathetic form on the bed._

_The faint mutterings of a chant could be heard, but not distinguished. It would have seemed like a part of a whole separate dream if only the fact that I could see a mouth moving in a puddle of clear water, the eyes focusing not on the form, but the puddle_

_The face that stared back at me…_

Eriol woke up in a cold sweat. The dream, the same dream that had been plaguing him for months, had not ceased at all. His breath came in haggard, panicked gasps and he tried to move. Any strength he possessed was gone. Laying on his back in these first waking moments, he never could get past the face.

It was Clow. The face staring back from the puddle was unmistakably that of Clow Reed.

But why these memories? He had no recollection of these events. The customary warning that preceded the sudden rush of the past did not come with these foggy pictures. Even stranger, not even when all of Clow's memories returned to him, had he inherited this memory. Nor had he inherited any sorts of memories pertaining to the events in the dream. He wondered what other secrets Clow had to hide. But, why now? Why was he dreaming about the past now? More importantly, why did Clow lock this memory away, possibly never to be seen?

His chest heaving with an irritated sigh, Eriol looked over to see what had woken him this time; seemingly the fates were allied against him continuing this dream.

Nakuru, and a very guilty looking Spinel, both covered in copious amounts of what looked to be flour. He swore he could see splinters of eggshell and tiny globs of runny yolk in the hair of his humanoid guardian. The feline had somehow managed to evade the chaos of its companion.

"We tried making that cake…"

Eriol barely avoided rolling his eyes. The troublesome thing about instilling the same penchant for mischief in one's magical creation as existed in one's self was the surprising results that it yielded. He sat halfway up in the bed and fixed his bleary gaze in the direction of the two figures. "The fates truly are allied against me," he muttered under his breath.

"Hmm?" The sly remark on the tip of the feline guardian's tongue faded away; Eriol could sense that much. Spinel settled on the thick comforter, a halo of white powder marking the spot where he landed.

"Just tell me what happened."

"I wanted to help make that cake for Tomoyo, but Soupy wouldn't let me!"

The aforementioned 'Soupy' managed a soft growl. "You see, I was stirring the eggs when he—" A gasp of protest sounded from Nakuru's direction "—decided to upend the flour on my head."

Nakuru pouted, crossing her arms over her chest. "You looked so serious, and I was only trying to help lighten the mood."

"Because you thought you had grabbed the sugar container!" Spinel roared, his fur ruffling considerably.

"It would have been funny," the humanoid retorted.

"You said that the last thousand times you tried that." The black cat began grooming himself, flapping his wings in an effort to dislodge the remaining flour there. "Besides, what are we going to do about the mess in the kitchen?"

"Mess?" The word perked Eriol's interest enough to rouse him from his half-wakefulness. "What mess?"

"The disaster that could," Spinel coughed, "under very abnormal circumstances, qualify as a kitchen."

"Did you blow anything up?"

The two guardians exchanged startled looks, as if this was a not-so-ordinary occurrence.

It was Ruby who responded first. "Not this time."

Eriol heaved a sigh of relief. "Well, as long as everything is still in one piece and I don't have to erase the memories of everyone within a city block, I think we'll all be fine." He smiled. "Besides, as long as you didn't kill all the eggs, I have a stash of ingredients that you two would never find."

O o o o O

It took him most of the morning to clean up what his guardians considered a disaster. In all rights, they were utterly correct. His kitchen looked remarkably similar to a winter meadow coated with morning fog. Egg bits dripped off cabinets. Paw and footprints alike marred flour-covered surfaces. A cloud of white mist still rose from the counters whenever a current of air moved in the room. Amazingly, they hadn't set anything on fire, nor had they managed to break anything too valuable. Yes, a wide assortment of mixing bowls and splinters of wooden spoons lay shattered on the ground, but he could always repair or replace such mundane objects. Replacing the entire kitchen wall – such was the case of previous 'fights' – often was much more tedious on his wallet as it cried out in agony. Small, simple household objects were not beyond his ability to repair. Entire kitchen walls (unfortunately) were.

Eriol sighed again, scrubbing yolk off an ornate cabinet as crashes and muttering echoed through the empty house, most likely Nakuru and Spinel attempting to help him clean the kitchen, but he didn't really wish to turn around to find out what had broken this time.

Perhaps it was his sanity? He often wondered how he managed to remain sane in this environment. Pausing thoughtfully from his work, the phone managed to pop his thought bubble. He rushed to pick it up.

"Hirigizawa residence, this is Eriol." The person on the other end of the line did not have to speak before he knew her identity. The way she breathed… the sounds of her house… the ways she moved and the ways she smiled… it was all imprinted in his brain. Tomoyo Daidouji. What she did to his heart and his body stunned even him. It was all he could do to not confess feelings he couldn't even name to this girl each time he saw her… talked to her… heard her breath in his ears.

"Hello, I hope you haven't forgotten about our meeting today." She sounded slightly annoyed, possibly at the budding couple. Sakura and Syaoran commonly went to her for advice on just about every aspect of their relationship. From the small things such as finding way to spend more time with each other, to the larger things like what Sakura would wear that day, Tomoyo was always there to lend a hand. He wondered how she did it.

"No, of course not." How could he forget? He'd been planning for it all week. He'd even gone out of his way to hide a stash of ingredients in the case that his guardians would attempt to assist him in that matter. Invariably, his house settled into a pattern of predictable chaos.

"You sure you'll be able to make it?" She giggled. The sound was something that would never lose its effect on his senses. "I hear a lot of crashing in the background."

"That would be Spinel and Ruby attempting to clean."

"Which leads to more work for you."

"Right," he put his palm to his forehead and shook his head. "I may be a little late."

"I understand," she said.

"I wish they were more understanding of my sanity," he muttered. Tomoyo responded with a muffled snigger. "And I think that I might withhold one vanilla cake… or perhaps I should just accidentally leave my famous pound cake at home."

"Pfft, world famous?" She snorted and the muffled laughter returned. "You are too much of a braggart to do that."

"Alas, I've been caught," he feigned an injured tone and clutched one hand to his chest, placing the back of the other to his forehead before realizing the gesture didn't quite translate over the telephone. "Whatever shall I do?"

"Stop the theatrics and clean your kitchen?" Tomoyo offered.

He shook his head a smile playing over his lips. "Or I could take your helpful advice."

"Please do," she replied sweetly. "After all, you've been bragging for nearly a week about these universally famous cakes that you bake. And if someone hadn't informed poor Sakura and Syaoran convinced that the ancient Japanese did _not _originally bake cakes in order to serve as measuring devices, I'm sure someone would have clubbed you by now. Nevertheless, I think Chiharu was about ready to."

"No, I think that was Yamazaki." Eriol winced at the thought of a rampaging Chiharu as something large – and possibly very valuable – came crashing down in the background. He was seriously considering banishing Ruby and Spinel to opposite corners of the house before they broke something else. Maybe they would spare the refrigerator this time. He could only hope.

_Post fiction…_

The title "splinters" came up during a brainstorming session between Candyland and me. I felt it a fitting title as much of this fiction involves splinters of past memories. And just like Fallen Neo, nothing really is ever going to be exactly as it seems.

See you next update: _Ciuline_ _Ihmenjo_


	2. Splinters II

Splinters

A fan fiction by: Ciuline Ihmenjo

Card Captor Sakura does not belong to me. The characters in Card Captor Sakura do not belong to me. CLAMP owns CCS. Besides, even if you do try and sue me, I have no money.

_Dawn…_

It's been a long while since I've last visited this story. I've had little bits and pieces of it up in various documents for quite a long time, now. I have the direction, but once again, I'm lost about what exactly to do about the middle of the story. Sorry for the long wait between updates, but I hope to remedy that in the near future! This is the second part of an Ihmenjo double-update, with a few surprises to come in the future.

I'm hoping to push through a few ideas and get another chapter for a story and even a few one-shots up by New Years day. Hope to see you readers, again, at that time.

_Italicized words_ are thoughts. **Bold words** are emphasis. CAPS WORDS are shouting.

**o()o Splinters II: Tomoyo o()o**

_I didn't recognize the ceiling above me..._

_It was the same ceiling I'd been staring at for nights and nights on end, but some part of me knew it was different._

_I wasn't my ceiling, but, at the exact same time, it was my ceiling._

_At first, I thought I had been whisked away by some means of magic. Magic, certainly was not a new occurrence to me. _

_In this case, magic was not a new occurrence at all. Magic was keeping me alive. _

But, I'm not sick...

_I looked up again at the thatched roof above my head. I had sheets of the finest silk in the purest of whites wrapped around my body, a harsh contrast to the meager furnishings of the room._

But, these are not my sheets...

_I coughed, felt my body leave the bed, but no noise emerged. Someone's hand beside me went instantly to my head. Something buzzed in this surreal world and I could sense motion nearby. I could not even feel the slight comfort of the hand on my head, nor the white cloth that suddenly covered my eyes. I wanted to cry out, to say something, to beg for water as pain wrecked my fragile physical state. I could feel the pain, setting my head to sweating and my body to soaking through the silk sheets and my bed clothes. _

Why am I so certain that they are… they were… made of silk…?

_The hand left my head and I could see someone walk through the door._

Who...?

_I couldn't see this person, but there was something so decidedly familiar about that person. Him? Perhaps it was a 'her', instead? I felt another wave of pain begin at my feet and lurch towards my head. Bile rose in my throat. I could feel my mouth opening in a silent scream, but sound would not emerge..._

Tomoyo Daidouji woke with a start. She could hear the final echoes of a loud crash. Her bedside table lay on the ground. This time, at least, she had been prepared. The alarm clock, lamp, and other valuable possessions - a dearth of framed pictures of one Sakura Kinomoto, two of which had been hastily repaired with a large quantity of scotch tape - lay on her dresser, safely out of harm's way. She glared at the nightstand. She had been so close this time.

The shutters had blown open once. Her bedside table had a strange habit of crashing to the ground. Lamps fell. Alarms went off hours in advance. Once she had even woken up because some small bird had slammed into her head. It was beginning to grate even on her exceedingly long fuse. The fact she was such a light sleeper irritated her even more.

Of course, these visions were beginning to trouble her just as much as her strange waking habits as of late. She ran her hands over her body. Her long dark locks were damp with sweat. Her bed was just as saturated as her clothes were. They stuck to her body like a second skin. She never woke up peacefully from these dreams. It was the memory of some person remembering the doctor who treated her. She had no clue why she felt so linked with the doctor or the person in this vision. All she knew was those things the patient knew and even that was mostly shrouded in mystery.

"Maybe I should ask Sakura to do a divination?" she proclaimed, rubbing her eyes. At least this time it was morning. She had to purchase a new alarm clock earlier in the week when she had been woken at full dark and had angrily chucked the offensive but unknowing device at her wall. The doctor had finally parted the curtain, too.

The door burst open just as she blinked the remains of sleep-fog from her mind.

"Tomoyo!" her mother cried out, voice full of concern. "Are you okay?" Her mother's hair and clothes, usually prim, proper, and presentable were a mess. The flattening iron cord has wrapped itself around her ankle and was no worse for wear.

"I-I'm fine?" she managed, somewhat quizzical at such a strange disturbance.

"You were screaming." Her mother rushed to the bedside - poor grooming instrument clattering behind her - and placed a hand on her daughter's damp forehead. "You don't have a fever." She began to prod and pinch parts of the still-confused girl. "No strange aches," she announced. "You aren't in pain or anything?"

"I was... screaming?" The sleep-fog was threatening to return. She shook her head in an attempt to clear it. Tomoyo would have welcomed it, though, in exchange for the utter lack of comprehension she was experiencing. A quick glance at the clock told her she did not have such liberties. "I'm fine, mother," she nearly snapped before checking her tone. "Really, I just had a bad dream."

Her mother looked at her for a moment and sighed. Tomoyo mused for a moment it wasn't the dream that was so bad, it was waking up without any idea of what the dream was about. She hastily brushed her mother's hand away. She could almost hear the clock ticking down the minutes until school began.

"Are you sure? I could call the school and..."

"Mother," Tomoyo said with a sigh and pulled the covers away. "Sakura is presenting a project today."

"Oh!" Sonomi looked flustered and stepped away from her daughter as if this was a momentous occasion. The poor abused flattening iron slithered along the floor behind her until it smacked against the overturned nightstand. Mother and daughter turned in unison towards the source of the noise. Sonomi regarded the flattening iron with curiosity before seeming to realize she had picked up an accidental passenger. Stooping down to pick it up, she righted the nightstand as well.

"Are you absolutely sure you're okay?" Sonomi asked. Her face was still that of the overly-concerned mother. The image was somewhat skewed by the straightening iron, which would be showing considerable relief were it able to.

Tomoyo suppressed a giggle and nodded. "I'm fine."

"Your nightstand..."

"I'm fine," she repeated. "Just a little irritated."

"At me?" Sonomi looked hurt.

"Never!" Tomoyo said. "Just at my dreams," she added as an after thought.

Sonomi contemplated her daughter's words as Tomoyo fluttered around the room, collecting grooming items and undergarments. Arms wrapped around a bundle of various bottles and various articles of her school uniform, she hurried to the bathroom.

O o o o o O

Tomoyo was still brushing the last remains of unruly hair as she walked towards her front gate. The sight there caused her to stop short. "Hiragizawa," she said, giving him a slight, but polite bow.

"You're late," Eriol said cheerfully, a bundle in his hand. He extended it towards her, mischievous grin plastered on his face.

"I see you aren't empty handed this time," she said with a teasing grin. "Shall we get going?"

Eriol nodded and turned with her towards the school. "Leave it to your own creations to make sure that your handcrafted beautiful, wonderful, ever-so-delicious—" Tomoyo 'ahem-ed' at this point – Eriol, taking the cue, cut his string of emphasis short. "—cake turns into something resembling charcoal."

"And is this a slice of charcoal or a slice of heaven?" she said with a grin.

"Well, as I don't know what heaven tastes like, I can't really answer that question." He grinned at her. "Are you feeling all right?"

"It's nothing. Just something on my mind."

Eriol nodded. "I've a similar problem," he said. "It's one of those things that I just can't place, can't quite figure out what it is, but it feels so important."

"Care to share anything about it?"

Eriol thought for a moment. Something didn't feel right in the back of his mind. It was that little buzzing sensation in the back of his mind that usually screamed at him before something exploded in his house. "It's something you probably couldn't help with."

"How can you be so sure?" Tomoyo looked a bit put off. Eriol hastily corrected.

"It has to do with Spinel and Ruby… and the noxious cloud of flour that has been lazily drifting through my house for the last few days."

"It sounds very much out of my league." She giggled and nodded. "Besides, I can have Sakura do a divination on my problem." She paused for a moment, wanting to ask him about it. The more she thought about it, the more the idea soured in her head. Giving her head a slight shake, she smiled a little. Eriol was busy enough with his own problems to take on her silly little dreams. Certainly, it was something so simple that would be over in an instant. Just the settling of a little curiosity and it would be the end of it. But Sakura had magic enough to spare for something as small as a fortune, especially on something as small as the identity of a person who was floating in and out of her dreams. "I figured there should be time during the lunch break."

Eriol thought about this for a moment. "Maybe you can come by later. Ruby seems to be on much better behavior when you're around. Perhaps she is fearful of bringing down such frightful wrath upon herself?"

Tomoyo stopped to glare at him, and Eriol ducked away. "That's exactly what I'm talking about!" he said with mock-seriousness when he deemed it safe enough to walk next to her once more. "You can be absolutely fierce when you get angry."

Grumbling something under her breath about cakes, Tomoyo loudly -- but carefully -- annunciated the words "awful" and "ugly." Eriol dropped his jaw and only started incredulously in her direction. It wasn't the exact response that she wanted, but she continued to walk alongside him, trying to start some sort of conversation with his blank face. He only shuffled forwards. She gave him a light prod and then a more forceful one.

"Eriol?" she tried once more, shifting her direction closer to the wall lining the sidewalk, before slightly increasing her pace. It took her a moment to realize that Eriol had not caught her cue. He collided with the nearest street pole, rebounding with a reverberating clang of skull-against-metal.

Wincing slightly while trying to locate the last vestiges of his dignity, he managed to scrape his composure together just before Tomoyo arrived, handkerchief in hand, to aid him.

"You aren't hurt?"

"I'm fine," he said, waving his hands before him.

"Really?" She eyed the pole, now sporting a significantly large dent on the side of it – at about Eriol-height – and then him once more. "Even though you look worse for wear than the pole…"

"I'm fine," he repeated, continuing the waving hand motion. "It's nothing I haven't experienced before."

"The great and mighty Eriol isn't invulnerable?" Tomoyo raised an eyebrow and stopped fussing over him for a moment. She really didn't want to be fussing over him. Eriol was this enigma, certainly, but it was an enigma she didn't need to be attracted to. He was a friend and a staunch supporter of Sakura. In the end, Sakura was all that mattered.

"The great and mighty Eriol knows that poles have a higher density than his head, if that's what you're asking." He rubbed furiously at his brow before looking up at her. Tomoyo was utterly lost in thought. "You do realize… if we show up late, together and somewhat disheveled, the entire school may get the wrong impression."

And then he clamped his mouth shut. The look she shot him went through multiple phases all in a single moment. The anger he expected flashed first. She paused in thought and her brow knitted in concentration. But then she surprised him. A faint smile appeared, tugging at the corners of her mouth before she dissolved into pure mirth.

Her laughter stopped him in his tracks. It was like a scene from a movie. He half-expected little birds to come down and start making a musical number out of this moment. It would take only but a few seconds until a few people would pop out of the background and start singing sappy romance music to this scene. The birds didn't come, nor did a group of talking mice, but he did look up in time to narrowly avoid a second fateful meeting with a telephone pole.

"The great and mighty Eriol might need to get his head out of the clouds, though," Tomoyo managed to sputter between fits of giggles.

"If it was in the clouds, then perhaps that might explain why it seems to be raining on this silly parade today."

"There's no parade," Tomoyo said matter-of-factly. She was giggling still, but not quite as much as she had previously been. "Besides, if there was a parade, I'd think there would be more to celebrate about." She looked around before pointing a finger at the middle of his forehead.

"We're not celebrating my injuries!" Eriol protested, looking straight at her. The sudden arching of her eyebrows were the only warning he got in order to dodge the street sign approaching his body.

"How about celebrating that you won't have another one?" Tomoyo offered.

"You're going to jynx me," he said with a sigh.

"I'm sure you'll be just fine," she said cheerfully.

Certainly, Tomoyo did everything in her power to continue distracting him. Eriol finally committed part of his magical resources into avoiding obstacles before him. On one hand, he was spending more time with Tomoyo. On the other hand, she might be trying to further injure him.

He watched her pull the camera from her bag as they approached the school. Sakura was waiting by the front gate with a somewhat embarrassed look on his face. The former was all waving motions and a flurry of hands. The latter was slowly shifting from foot to foot while watching the two girls before him gossiping. Tomoyo, herself, was shifting all around her friends, as if trying to find the perfect angle. Eriol nodded and approached the group, artfully swinging his bag over one shoulder. Syaoran eyed him with a cautious glance while Tomoyo and Sakura waved cheerfully. He waved back and hastened to a trot to meet them.

The only thing that bothered him about this entire morning is that Tomoyo hadn't stopped giggling whenever she saw him, even when they had gotten to school. Perhaps she was trying to exact some sort of perverse revenge on him? Eriol wasn't sure what troubled him more: Tomoyo hadn't run into a pole the entire time, nor had she (literally) run into any sort of pole-related incident. As much as he didn't wish any harm on her, at the same time, he did wish that she wasn't so happy about his misfortune.

Only one other thing was bugging him: he did wish that Tomoyo wasn't relating the entirety of the events to Syaoran. He could deal with that later, though…

_Dusk…_

Well, I think I actually have a tempo down for this story, so expect to see more of in the in near future! I do hope to have at least a few more chapters up before I run out of steam! You'll definitely see the alternation between the Eriol's and Tomoyo's perspective for each upcoming chapter.

See you next update: _Ciuline_ _Ihmenjo_


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